


The Way Home

by lferion



Series: The Grey Book of Erebor [9]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, HobbitAdvent, Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Home is behind, the world ahead"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Hobbit Advent day 13, prompt: Home

* * *

Near the beginning of the journey, before the Company even reached Bree after gathering in Hobbiton and collecting their Burgler, Gandalf had said something to the Hobbit that stuck in Balin's mind. "Home is behind," he'd said, navigating around an outcropping of stone in a copse of trees, high clouds turning the sky to burnished steel, not even a brighter spot to show where the sun sailed, "the world ahead." That comfortable smial and soft green land of little hills was Bilbo's home, of course, which they had just left, and in an immediate sense thus behind them. (Though, in an absolute sense, at the moment it was quite unclear what direction was ‘behind’ and what ‘ahead’. Not that it mattered, really.) But for half the Company, Ered Luin was the only home they had known, however little they may have thought of it that way. 

Balin was not sure about Dori or Nori, or even Gloin (since, with a wife from Ered Luin and a child, being born in Erebor might not have the same hold), but for Oin his brother, for Balin himself, Dwalin, and particularly Thorin, Erebor was home. Not Ered Luin.

And yet, in another sense, the whole of Middle Earth was home, for were there not Dwarves in every place that Mahal had made mountains? Had they not walked and worked and traded along every road between the Iron Hills and Ered Luin, Ered Nimrais to Ered Mithrin, Erebor to the Orocarni? They had a stake in the world, not just their own delvings

Perhaps it was even simpler than that, though. Perhaps it was the people, not the places, that truly made a home. Balin looked out over the tips of his pony's ears to Thorin's straight back, the way he leaned ever-so-slightly forward, ahead, toward Erebor, through however much of the world they would need to travel. For Balin, where his king was, was home.


End file.
